History of cereal milling

The purpose of flour milling is to isolate the starchy endosperm in as pure a state as possible, uncontaminated by other germ or bran.

The process of flour milling dates back to Egyptian and earlier times. There are illustrations from ancient inscriptions showing grain being crushed using a mortar and pestle.

The first rotary mill was developed 2300 years ago in Mesopotamia. The millstone were first hand operated, then driven by animals and finally driven by water power.

In ancient Rome the mill and the bakery were the very same enterprise. The grain were milled and worked up without delay to dough and bread.

Around the Mediterranean and possibly also in China during the first half of the first millennium BC, there were two sophisticated versions of the handmill the hopper-rubber and the lever mill.

By that time, milling became a profession because of the improvement of milling tools and production of surplus products.

Millstone dominated the process used to produce flour until the 1870s when roller mills began to supplement them on a large scale, because of the superior flour that could be produced using them.

In 1842, Thomas Kingsford, who first invented a process for the manufacture of starch from maize, founded the cornstarch refining industry.

The basic principles relied upon by Kingsford are still used in the wet milling industry, though many technical improvements have been made.

Moving to the milling process proper, it was in 1878 that Henry Simon took 19 British millers, to Hungary to view the all steel rollermill invention.

During the latter half of the 19th century the present concept of a gradual reduction in the milling of wheat was developed which improved the flour color. During this period middling purifiers also appeared which helped the removal of the branny material.
History of cereal milling